APACHES

APACHES: translation

The Native American Apache tribes nearly always appear in Westerns as the most brutal of all Indiantribes. Their territory covered the southwest U.S. border with Mexico, and their most famous chief was Geronimo. Numerous Westerns portray Apaches as engaging in “savage war” simply because it is their evil nature to do so. In John Ford’sStagecoach(1939), the helpless stage is attacked for no reason by warring Apaches. Early in the film, when rumors of an Indian uprising are mentioned, the mere fact that it is Apaches who are on the war path is enough to put terror into all hearts. In Robert Aldrich’s Apache (1954), Burt Lancaster played Massai, an ambivalent Apache warrior who escapes from transportation to Florida in order to return to the homelands and live out his life in peace. One of the few sympathetic portrayals of the tribe is Walter Hill’s Geronimo: An American Legend (1993). Ron Howard’s The Missing (2003) involves a young girl’s captivity at the hands of Apaches.